Wraith: Origins of Supers: Book Three Read online

  The test went as expected, the 7.62 sniper rifle rounds felt like little stabs in my mind, but they bounced off just fine, and was the heaviest caliber bullet my mom allowed to get shot at me. I’d compare the experience to being poked, annoying, but not damaging.

  The rest of the tests went as expected, no super speed, or any other abilities were found or brought out. Just telekinesis and active shielding at the macro and micro level, and teleportation. Of course, super healing too, but everyone had that, even first-generation supers that had the powers of a nightlight.

  Of course, telekinesis at the micro level was a very diverse power, and it’d be quite a while until I discovered everything that I could do with it.

  When mom met me on the other side of the gauntlet, she had a smile on her face that told me we weren’t quite done.

  She said, “See if you can teleport to the school, and come right back here.”

  I frowned, and I tried. Nothing happened, and I must’ve had a confused look on my face because my mother smiled calmly and spoke in a reassuring tone.

  “Harmony expected this. Your school is about a mile away. Too far for your power to verify the destination. I suspect your subconscious will prevent you from teleporting anywhere your mind can’t verify is empty. What if a person stood there, or some idiot moved your desk in the classroom? Teleportation is dangerous. You don’t want to appear in solid matter, which means when you teleport your telekinesis needs to create a vacuum in the shape of your body on the other side.”

  “Oh, that makes sense, I guess.”

  She smirked, and handed me a fifty, “See if you can reach the pizza place down the street, I ordered some pies about twenty minutes ago,” she said impudently.

  I rolled my eyes, and I gave it a shot. To my surprise I was standing in the parking lot and looking at Luigi’s pizza. I couldn’t help but wonder what my range was, that had to be at least three tenths of a mile.

  The pizza boxes were still steaming hot when I got home, mostly because I’d teleported straight to the kitchen, and I beat my mother who only had to take the elevator to the fifth floor in the building. Our quarters were a three-bedroom apartment in the government building, supers that worked for the city all lived and worked in the same place.

  Being a brat, I popped open the pizza box, grabbed a plate, and managed to grab a coke from the fridge and sit at the table before mom and dad came in.

  I looked up and said, “What took you so long?”

  My mother giggled.

  The last three months of school went quickly. As usual I spent a lot of it with my best friend Lia who had a bruiser power set. She was lithe and about five foot eight, with long raven hair and gray eyes. She had dark tanned skin, and although a little pushy at times she was a generous person.

  The other person I spent a lot of time with was my boyfriend, Christopher Jansen. He was six foot one, with a medium build, and he had a ruggedly handsome face and a hell of a disarming smile. He had brown hair and hazel eyes, and was as quiet as I was garrulous, but then most mad scientists were introverts. He was actually the son of Silvia, who was the head mad scientist working for the city, so we’d basically grown up together in the same building.

  During those three months I’d also taken the weekend Liberty course which lasted two months instead of two weeks for the same ten day course, but it got it out of the way. By the time graduation rolled around, I was licensed as a legal superhero, even if I didn’t have a team yet. Sure, more training was required, but I met the minimum requirements, and given all the training my parents, grandparents, and others had given me growing up I was ready to get started by the time graduation came around.

  That was all a little brief, I know, but my mother covered the Liberty course pretty well, I see no reason to retread that old ground. Point being, nothing all that significant happened in my life during those months. My mom had it much worse during that time in her life.

  I discovered my limit was just over half a mile in teleporting, and me being familiar with where I was going. I also spent a lot of time developing the subtlety of my power, working on lifting up and controlling a lot of little things, rather than throwing around heavy stuff.

  Lastly, I discovered I could teleport other things and people, but only if I was touching them. I couldn’t teleport someone to me, or from one spot to another when I stood in a third. I didn’t know why, but I imagined teleportation was extremely complicated, and for some reason my subconscious balked unless they were right next to me within touching distance.

  I mentioned earlier on, that I’d eventually come back to the subject of being intimidated by walking in my mother’s and grandmother’s shadows. They were famous worldwide, and beloved by the city. Granted, part of that was the incredibly dangerous and turbulent times in our past as the humanity shifted to homo-potens. But, their accomplishments were many, and also intimidating in scope. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to make my family proud, and I wanted to use my powers to help others.

  But… it also meant I wanted to take things in my own direction. I’d decided early on in life I had no intention of putting on a superhero suit and patrolling the streets. They were like the police and emergency workers of the new world, but there was more than one path forward for a superhero in the real world, and not in a comic book.

  I was going to blaze my own path, go a different way, and not work for the government or on their behalf at all. I’d still make a difference, but I wouldn’t have to deal with expectations in my mother’s and grandmother’s world. I could excel without always second guessing myself and having strangers judge me short of the family’s potential.

  Lia, Chris, and myself, along with Chris’s nascent A.I. named Aura wasn’t enough, though we’d had the idea of creating a private security and investigation company. Bodyguards were still needed in this day and age, not every powerset could fight and being in the public eye could be a dangerous place for people to be, and investigations would always be needed.

  Politicians, actors, rich people, and others that had to worry about espionage or having their families targeted by kidnappers, all that was very similar to the world long ago. Humanity was still made up of humans, after all, and some humans could be evil.

  So, I suppose that’s a good place to continue on with my story, after skipping forward to post-graduation. At the time I had no idea what lay in store for me, or the turbulent times that were approaching.

  The world was about to change again. Or maybe, the pessimist in me said, the world would simply be proving it hadn’t changed at all.

  Chapter Two

  The sun waned toward the west, as I hovered at several hundred feet. After a few months of practice in the obstacle course, flying had become an almost subconscious act, similar to learning to drive I suppose. Once all the little details stopped being a conscious act, things had smoothed out. My subconscious had mostly taken over like a normal flyer’s built-in instincts did with the power of flight from the start. I wasn’t all that fast, three hundred or so miles an hour was my top speed, but that was more than good enough to enjoy it.

  Lia floated next to me with a smirk on her face, as we both looked toward Chris who was the reason that we were even up there late that afternoon.

  My boyfriend was testing out an anti-gravity device, and we were there to catch him if things went south. It wasn’t a huge breakthrough, just part of his independent studies. Artificial gravity and anti-gravity had been around for decades.

  Plus, I was pretty sure he just wanted to be able to fly, like me.

  Lia said, “Looks like it’s working.”

  He nodded, “But it’s eating power at a phenomenal rate. We’ll have to land in about five minutes. I’ll have to improve the small reactor I designed.”

  I smiled, “More than good enough already, for an emergency.”

  He grunted in agreement, his eyes distant, and I suspected he was reviewing data on his contacts HUD.

  Lia said, “We need to
get moving on our privately-owned super team idea. We need more people, and to decide on services. Just protection and investigation, or more than that?”

  I wobbled a little when Aura appeared in my HUD. She wasn’t really there though, but the HUD made it look like she was. Aura was our age, right around eighteen. She was petite at five foot one, with long reddish-brown hair similar to the color of a fox’s fur, and doe brown eyes. She had a mischievous face, curvy body, a puffy fox tail, and fox ears, which made her look both cutely adorable and strangely sexy.

  Sexy enough in a fantasy way that I’d had words with Chris about it. I hadn’t quite called him a pervert, but it’d been a close thing. Both he and her swore up and down it was all her choice, and that she’d picked the look out of fantasy manga book from like eighty years ago. Whatever the hell manga was. At the moment she was also wearing a white silk kimono with flower designs on it.

  Aura said, “Consulting services as well. Chris can build custom technologies as well as the comms and suppression cuffs and field equipment such a business would need. I will of course assist in all aspects of the business, from data tracking to accounting.”

  I hummed, “That sounds fine, but I think we need another team to really get started. You and Chris for team support and tech, and Lia and I make a team, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another field team on board.”

  Lia nodded, “Agreed, we don’t want to start with too many people, it’ll take time to build a customer base, but one active team in the field isn’t enough. If for no other reason, if we need to guard someone twenty-four seven then we’ll need a relief shift. It wouldn’t be a good idea for both of us to work alone three hours a day for sleep shifts. We also need to upgrade our wardrobes from high school to adult.”

  She wasn’t wrong there, we were both wearing casual shorts and t-shirts, no one would hire us looking like that. It’d be hard enough to get work as a brand new private super team just because of our young ages. Which gave me an idea.

  “Uncle Jace, maybe he could help us find the right people, and join us himself. It wouldn’t hurt to have an older adult’s outlook either, or to interface with customers.”

  My uncle who’d just turned thirty had inherited his father’s powerset, which was post and pre-cognition of key events and lesser events if he had something to focus on. That could come in useful in investigations as well. At the moment, he was part of grandmother’s team, but with grandad there too he was redundant.

  Lia sighed, “He is kind of cute.”

  I laughed, “Eww, he’s my uncle. Chris?”

  Chris shrugged, and said deadpan, “I don’t know if he’s cute or not.”

  I rolled my eyes, but his disarming grin sent my stomach fluttering.

  He said seriously, “It’s a good idea. With his help we could add missing persons or kidnappings to our roster as well.”

  I nodded, “Let’s go see what he has to say.”

  Lia smirked, “Think he knows we’re coming?”

  I snickered, “If he doesn’t, then we don’t want him.”

  Aura giggled.

  I reached out and touched their shoulders, and we appeared on the sidewalk in front of my grandmother’s mansion. It hadn’t been all that far from where we’d been floating. My uncle had his own place, but I figured it was still the workday, so chances were that he was at the mansion which wasn’t just the place he grew up, it was where he worked most of the time.

  Point being, I just wanted to point out that my uncle wasn’t a thirty-year-old loser still living at home with his mom.

  Lia shuddered, “I hate when you do that, it freaks me out.”

  I grinned, “I got used to it, it hardly makes me feel disoriented at all anymore.”

  Lia shook her head, “But it’s your power.”

  Good point.

  We headed toward the door, which my uncle opened long before we could knock. He had on a dark blue suit and had a knowing smirk on his face. He might’ve been thirty, but like everyone else that’d quickened he barely looked twenty-three. He was six foot one, with short blond hair and blue eyes. He had a medium build, and as far as I could tell he didn’t take much seriously.

  He said in a teasing tone, “Come on in. You’re going to argue with me, but you really shouldn’t. I already know how it’s going to turn out.”

  I flipped my hair dismissively and rolled my eyes, even as I was relieved that he already appeared to be on board. In fact, he probably knew that before I’d even had the thought of inviting him into our plans. Hell, maybe he’d known while I was still in grade school, and he’d just been biding his time with grandma’s group until we finished growing up.

  “What are we arguing about?”

  He smirked, “Uniforms,” then walked away.

  We were forced to follow as we walked into the mansion, down the hall and into his study.

  “Uniforms,” I said with barely restrained disgust.

  He nodded, “Supers in service wear super suits. We want one that reflects the company and what we do, kind of like the secret service all wears the exact same super suit design. It will make us look more professional, and it’d be a fair warning to anyone planning mischief against a client we’re guarding, or just to give us instant credibility if other supers show up that work for the government.”

  “I don’t want to wear a super suit. I was thinking women’s suits, or professional dresses.”

  It wasn’t exactly body shyness that had me against the idea. I had the same lushly curvaceous petite body as my mother, and a similar cute face. In short, I had no hang-ups about my looks. I figured in ten years my grandmother, mother, and I would look like triplets. But I was hoping for more subtle than that.

  Lia said, “He’s not wrong.”

  I glared at the traitor, “He doesn’t have to wear one.”

  He snickered, “True, only our active agents will, you two, and Ella and Gabriel.”

  I frowned, “Red Guardian and Luminescent? That Ella and Gabriel?”

  Ella Marks was in her forties, with long and wavy red hair, and green eyes. Her face was fair and beautiful, and she had an athletic body. Red Guardian’s powerset included expanded shields, the second level of shielding that allowed a hero to expand a shield away from their body to include others. Not as adaptable as my mom’s projective shields, but powerful, and almost perfect for a bodyguard to have. She also had energy blasts which could knock someone out or put them down permanently.

  Her husband and patrol partner, Gabriel Marks, was a lightning wielder, with shields effective against energy and physical. He couldn’t expand his shields to cover another, but he could move very quickly and interpose himself between a supervillain and their target. He was in his late forties as well, six foot even, with black hair and brown eyes. He was muscular, and good looking.

  In short, those two were perfect for what I had in mind for our super team, and they were already a super team with twenty plus years of experience.

  There was only one problem, they worked for mom.

  He nodded, “They’ve been patrolling and risking their lives for over twenty years. They’re getting burned out, and I know they’ll jump at the chance for a change in job. Investigations and not just violence, finding kidnap victims or missing persons, and even guarding a client instead of a whole city. They’re ready for a change in their lives.”

  I frowned, “Wait, you’re distracting me. Bad uncle! We still hadn’t decided on the uniforms.”

  He smirked, “Yes we have, you’re just not done fighting about it yet.”

  I covered my face and let out a sigh.

  “Seriously, it better be tasteful.”

  He nodded, “Of course, nothing overly revealing. I was thinking about a full body black bodysuit, with grayish white accents. Something on the subtler side like you wanted, no bright and eye-catching colors, but obviously super suits. Dynamic Investigations and Security Consultants. Not just bodyguards, but security systems too given Chris’s abilities
, and mine to see if the system has any holes.”

  “Won’t mom object?”

  He waved a hand, “My sister won’t mind that much, they have a full roster right now, and there’ll be more than enough qualified people coming out of Liberty this time of year, right after graduation. She won’t have any trouble replacing them, and it’s the nature of our business.”

  Lia said, “They can also continue our training, with that much experience.”

  “You’ll interface with the customers? Us teens would just chase them off.”

  He agreed, “Yes, and Ella and Gabriel can help.”

  I sighed in disgust, and waved, “Fine, suits.”

  Chris looked happy to hear it, which made me blush, because I knew he just wanted an eyeful. I on the other hand, kind of wanted to give him one. Just… not too much of one, if you know what I mean, since everyone else in the world would be seeing it too.

  Or, maybe he just wanted to sink his teeth into super-suit tech as a mad scientist. That was a depressing thought, though it shouldn’t have been.

  “Right, still a lot to be worked out, and you’ll need access to Aura.”

  There was still a lot to be discussed, and for the rest of the afternoon we talked over the nuts and bolts of the business. As already discussed, we’d be consulting for security tech and other mad scientist type stuff. We’d also guard VIPs, investigate for private citizens, and search for missing people or kidnap victims. The super suits would only be worn by Lia, Ella, Gabriel, and me, and of course we only had to wear them while on duty or during the workday.

  The face masks would be minimal as well.

  As my uncle had predicted, Ella and Gabriel were more than happy to take a break from the higher stress of guarding the whole city, and once we had customers it’d also be more lucrative to work in the private sector. Superheroes patrolling the city were paid very well, but not as much as a private concern could make.